CEO to CEO

The Quest for Innovation Keynote

This keynote was delivered for Grant Thornton's 4th Annual Food and Beverage Industry Forum on December 8th, 2010 in San Francisco at the City Club. The first ten minutes are shown here.

Spanning Value Chain Elements

September 2, 2010.

Excel is the antithesis of the show, Hell’s Kitchen. Not Excel the spreadsheet program, but Excel, a category-leading dehydrated potato mix that is sold to the food service industry by Basic American Foods. CEO Loren Kimura slipped me some samples of the powdered mix after we met and I made some myself at the house. “Yummy”, said my wife. All I did was add 1 cup of boiling water, stirred, covered, and let it sit for 12 minutes. It would certainly calm some of the panic and chaos that is the currency of Hell’s Kitchen.

Pondering the Cause of Death of an Innovation

September 20th, 2010.

We didn’t intend to talk about cat litter over breakfast. But Jack Robertson, recent CEO, now Chairman of Joint Juice was talking about his P&G days, then his Clorox days, where he presided over many, many product launches, including the cat litter product “Fresh Step Litter”. Today it clocks over a billion in annual revenues. The scenting idea was originally going to be used as a “new and improved” attribute for an existing cat litter product, but it seemed too good for that. As a new product, it almost got killed, having come out with too high a price point at first.

Innovation: Food Convergence

Food and Beverage CEO Research Project:

What does innovation mean to you, your company and your industry?

CEOs love to learn. Ride along with speaker, author and consulting CEO Robert Sher’s journey as he interviews over two dozen northern California Food and Beverage CEOs. This essay is #2 in a series which shares his thinking as he collects and analyzes the perspectives of these leaders. His quest to get inside the heads of industry innovators is leading up to his keynote at Grant Thornton’s 4th Annual Food and Beverage Industry Forum on December 8th, 2010. To see other stories in the series, click here.
By Robert Sher

September 1, 2010. It was one of those scorching hot days in downtown San Francisco that makes you think about global warming. I popped out of BART just in time to race to the Peet’s at 2nd and Howard to meet with Mike Dovbish, Managing Director of the Nutrition Capital Network. After some exploration, I learned that there is no Peet’s at 2nd and Howard. A few minutes late I found Mike and the Peet’s at 2nd and Mission. What a day to explore on foot! To cool down, I bought the green iced tea (with healthy catechins, if freshly brewed). I paid rapt attention in Peet’s since I knew I’d be meeting with the Jean-Michel Valette, the Chairman of Peet’s in a day or two.

Who Holds the Presumption of Integrity?

By Robert Sher
September 3, 2010 Greenbrae, CA

Where would you suggest that I have an interview with Jean-Michel Valette, the Chairman of Peet’s Coffee and Tea? At a Peet’s of course! We arranged the meeting by e-mail and squeezed it in just before he headed off to France. Given his name and destination, I anticipated a strong French accent. But he sounded as Californian as me, and only our outside seating under an umbrella reminded me of Paris.

From Jean-Michel’s days as a VC with Hambricht & Quist, he’s developed a true love for distribution channels. In fact he made it sound as important as the product! He asserted that many firms can have great offerings, but if there’s not a differentiated path to the consumer, the likelihood of success is much lower. Now this opinion came forth as we talked about startups and small companies that can’t buy their way into the market. The logic seems solid: If a new product needs consumer pull to get it on grocery shelf, then that product has to find some other way to connect to consumers to create that pull.

Innovation: David v. Goliath?

Food and Beverage CEO Research Project: What does innovation mean to you, your company and your industry?

By Robert Sher

CEOs love to learn. Ride along with speaker, author and consulting CEO Robert Sher’s journey as he interviews over two dozen northern California Food and Beverage CEOs. This essay is one in a series which shares his thinking as he collects and analyzes the perspectives of these leaders. His quest to get inside the heads of industry innovators is leading up to his keynote at Grant Thornton’s 4th Annual Food and Beverage Industry Forum on December 8th, 2010.

August 26, 2010. My interview with Lisa Noble, CEO of Farmhouse Foods really began two nights earlier, as I ran out to Lucky Supermarkets to bring home some of her rice and pasta selections to taste them. This brand predates us all (founded 1890), and was MJB Rice Company for many years. My son agreed to help me eat the White Cheddar Pasta, but my wife said, “I don’t need to taste the rice: I grew up eating it”.

Cross-Linking Supply Chains & Establishing New Value Allocations

By Robert Sher

It takes special conditions for success in starting a business that can grow to a grand scale. Many CEOs find it’s easier and less risky to take an existing business and tune it up, reducing costs or improving quality to grab a bigger piece of the value chain. We CEOs look at our suppliers on one hand and our customers on the other.

But what if there are no suppliers or customers yet? If the supply chain hasn’t been formed? If the flow of transactions has not yet begun? Then you’d have to create the entire supply chain. Not unlike starting a new business, special conditions would need to exist, and a wide variety of players and processes would need to start at the same time to have a sustainable, ongoing system. CEO Neal Gutterson of Mendel Biotechnology (Group 110) is building a new supply chain by cross-linking three existing supply chains in new and unique ways. And what fun it is!

Keeping your Leading Edge: Mind the Gap

By Robert Sher
In London the “gap” on the Underground is dangerous. But for the gap I’m thinking about, bigger is better. Order me up a moat, or a chasm, please. I’m talking about the performance gap between your company’s superior product or service and your competitors’.

This month, I’ve seen no less than seven leaders (six CEOs and one CFO) where the size of their gap was at the heart of their insomnia. For one company, the gap is so wonderfully huge that he’s staying awake at night figuring out how to keep up, and is presently holding back new customers from signing on until he’s ready. For now, his would-be customers are not going anywhere because they don’t have any good alternatives.

Full Speed Ahead but Going No-Where

Summary: In such adverse conditions that exist today in the economy, chief executives must be realistic about achievable objectives and not over-spend or panic in a futile attempt to grow revenues or profits. At the same time, companies must run at their most efficient at watch out adjust for nasty surprises that could spell the end for the organization.

Out of the Industry Innovation

Summary: One way to innovate is to observe practices in other industries and adopt those that will be powerful and new to your industry. This article discusses two examples of this, and how you can innovate in this fashion.